Part of my original inspiration for becoming a blogger was the infamous blog Belle de Jour, the Diary of a London Call Girl. I hadn't heard of her when she stopped blogging back in September 2004, however a couple of days afterwards I spotted an article on the BBC web site which was reporting the fact that she had given up. When I looked at her blog, it occurred to me that it might be fun to become a blogger, but it wasn't until five months later that I wrote my first post.For years, the true identity of Belle was a mystery. Another woman who blogged about her sex life was outed as a film assistant Zoe Margolis in August 2006, but still no one knew who Belle was. Today however, I get a txt msg from LWW telling me to go and look at a web site, and when I go to the site it turns out to be a story about who Belle really is. Finally, Belle herself has decided to reveal her identity through an interview in the Sunday Times.
It turns out that we have one thing in common. When I wrote a post titled Things I'm glad that I did in my life so far last year, one of the things that I said was that I was glad that I did a PhD. It turns out that Belle's real name is Dr Brooke Magnanti, because she also has a PhD, in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science in her case.
Belle's blog about being a call girl was only active for about a year, but it's now been over four and a half years since I wrote my first post, and I'm still posting about two times a week :-). I still enjoy it, so for now at least, I have no plans to retire!
Update 19-Nov-2009: An interesting footnote to this story in The Guardian
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